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Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

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Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#581
post #71
post #31

The 24GB unified memory is a really nice upgrade (the M1 MBA has 8GB upgradeable to 16GB). The CPU/GPU upgrades are predictable and wlecome but the memory is huge. A lot of development isn't CPU bound but is memory bound or at least can really benefit from more memory. This upgrade makes the MBA an entirely viable dev machine for many workloads. I have a MBP (Intel) but it's expensive. Getting a viable machine for $1…

For web dev the base model (8GB RAM) MacBook Air M1 is a viable dev machine - makes the maxed out i7 MacBook Pro I had from work feel sluggish in comparison.

It absolutely isn't. I initially bought an M1 with 8GB, and it would constantly crawl to a halt. Unfortunately I was past my return window so had to sell it at a loss to buy another 16GB.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#584
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely true, though... https://www.asus.com/us/site/gaming/rog/gaming-laptops/flow-... It's a very small laptop with the option to utilize a current generation Nvidia GPU.

Mobile GPUs are much slower, they only share the same name

I don't think you read the full details. The Asus Flow convertible is a tablet/laptop that supports a full desktop external GPU, in addition the discrete mobile GPU that is built into the device.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#585
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They show 2 base models, with upgradable ram. I'm not sure where they're lying.

Nope: https://www.apple.com/de/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air They show two models with 8gb. Period. Nothing say upgradable there, which is bad UX. > But it is hidde in the fluff text much further down the page. Or on the next page, which you haven't opened yet. Yeah, bad UX/lying.

No different than any other BTO models.. you're offered upgrades at the time of purchase. Maybe that's just my conditioning as an American consumer speaking though.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#586
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for the person who's looking for a machine to handle emails, facebook, netflix, and maybe a bit of document editing, 8GB is totally fine. and even if that extra ram was free, it still has a cost in battery life. 8GB of ram is the right choice for a lot of people buying a macbook air.

> a machine to handle emails, facebook, netflix, and maybe a bit of document editing, 8GB is totally fine for that kind of usage a $750 acer/asus laptop would probably be good too, however.

It would, but people like macbooks and apple likes their money

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to refresh fast enough to run Doom on it. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/21/13697058/... Framerate's hard to determine from a youtube video of someone pointing a camera at it, single-stepping has some things seeming to move at the same framerate as the camera but redrawing the whole screen as the player moves around looks more like 1/3 of the camera's framerate to me.

True, but the "can run Doom" framerate could be 1 per minute. It obviously can update decently fast, but whether it's a "display" is arguable.

It looks to be at worst 10fps to my eyes. Which is also where animation really starts to shift from “moving drawings” to “fast slideshow” in my experience. So right on the border.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#588
post #451
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather buy a similarly light laptop, that has a touchscreen. You can already get AMD Zen 3+ machines in this size class, that isn't too far behind in perf & efficiency. Doing so gives you much better Linux compatibility, a touchscreen, and (sometimes) better feeling keyboards. Battery life will always come up short though, x86 laptops just can't match these new macbooks.

Examples?

I am still in love with my xps 13 9360 laptop. 4k oled touchscreen 14 inch ultra book, the form factor just works.

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#589

In Europe we are waiting for the M1 chip enabled Apple computers to arrive (as of the delivery). I ordered mine in January, still has not arrived.

That's brutal, where are you from? The Czech store doesn't show any delivery dates beyond August, even on weird CTO MacBooks.

Hungary. Yeah they told me to wait 6-8 weeks for a custom MBP. It was 20 weeks ago. :)

Re: Apple unveils all-new MacBook Air, supercharged by the new M2 chip

#590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the point you are trying to make here. I wish you luck getting a 2022 Apple machine with 8GB of RAM to handle 2 VMs, IntelliJ, a logic project with 100 tracks or 4K video editing. These tasks are all limited by available RAM and the available RAM has not significantly increased since 2012 (my point).

Where did the 8GB number come from? The discussion was about 16GB.

The MacBook Airs have 8GB unless you build to order. My point is that Apples system-on-a-chip architecture, while giving big performance and efficiency gains, comes with a trade-off. That trade off is availability and pricing of RAM configurations.
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